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Hunting does not control foxes, says study

By James Randerson

Fox numbers did not increase following the hunting ban enforced during the UK’s foot and mouth disease epidemic in 2001, say researchers. The results casts doubt on one of the main arguments in favour of hunting with hounds – that rural fox populations would explode without it, endangering livestock.

A ban on fox hunting is currently being debated by the UK parliament and has provoked intense reactions on both sides of the argument. Hunts kill up to 30,000 foxes each year, out of an estimated population of 240,000.

“There’s been a lot of myth and hype over the impact of hunting on fox numbers,” says Steven Harris at Bristol University who led the study. “But this is the first opportunity to quantify the effects of a ban on hunting.”

However, Darren Hughes of the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance says&colon; “This finding is totally contrary to our own findings”. He says in a survey of 600 farmers in spring 2002, two thirds reported an increase in fox sightings on their land.

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Harris replies that this increase is probably due to the foxes becoming bolder in the absence of hunting.

Fox faeces

The scientists surveyed 160 one-kilometre squares of rural land spread across England and Wales in spring 1999, 2000 and 2002. From February 2001 hunting was banned for 10 months to reduce the risk of spreading foot and mouth disease (FMD).

Volunteers estimated fox numbers by counting fox faeces along hedges or fences, where foxes prefer to move. Harris says that there was no increase following the hunting ban.

But Hughes says that even if there was not a dramatic population increase, this could be due to other control measures such as shooting and snaring filling the gap.

Harris rejects this, saying that many gamekeepers who would normally control fox numbers were involved in the FMD cull and that there were severe controls on movement&colon; “There’s no way they could have increased the level of culling.”

In the spotlight

“I welcome the fact that we are actually talking about data,” says Jonathon Reynolds of the Game Conservancy Trust, a charity that researches the ecology of game species.

However, he is sceptical that the method Harris used to count foxes was even capable of detecting an increase in fox numbers. “They’ve not really convinced us of the sensitivity of this approach,” he says.

Reynolds says he would not like to see policy decisions based on the Bristol study. He thinks that counting foxes at night with spotlights would be a more accurate population measure.

Harris is adamant he used the best practical method. Spotlight counts are extremely dependent on terrain, fox activity and boldness, he says. So the numbers recorded depend heavily on the history of shooting and hunting in an area. On the other hand, a fox cannot avoid its bodily functions, he says.